Falling SAT scores.Teaching to the lowest common denominator… Letting parents determine what is taught... Letting kids determine what is taught... Giving in to every demand of insecure minorities. Politically correct courses. Politically correct text books. Politically correct testing.Politically correct grading. School prayer – If you want to prey, go to the church of your choice. Creationism – If you want to learn about religious beliefs, go to your church. Hokey courses.Opposition to standardized tests. People wanting diplomas when they can not pass the exit exams – dumb, dumb, dumb. There are some problems here. The California school system is producing dummies.

The 4 biggest problems with the California school system are: a) not enough emphasis is placed on the 3 R's, b) until recently, there were no standardized test in all of California (Everybody made up their own tests so that everyone passed.), c) there is way too much violence in the public schools in the ghettos, and d) there are not enough trade schools.

There are no other subjects more important than the three R’s. All necessary measures should be expended to do a good job of teaching the 3 R’s, even the exclusion of any other or even all other subjects, when necessary.

How is it possible for some educators to be against standardized tests? They must be crazy. How else can you see how well the students are doing compared to other students in the same city/county/state/country??? How else can you insure that all students are being taught the fundamentals (the 3 R's)??? Or are they trying to hide something? Or is it more politically correct to not be able to tell? Sometimes political correctness is counter productive. But I personally subscribe to the cover-up theory. Evasion of responsibility. Of course teachers can not be held responsible for kids who do not study or do not do their homework, nor for foreigners who do not yet speak English, nor for people who have other learning disabilities (including low IQ). But every kid should be tested and, aside from the above "problem" kids, the teachers held accountable for their education.

School violence, bullying, intimidation and extortion are completely unacceptable. Privet schools (and charter schools?) may be the only answer. Kick the bums out. Of course that would make regular public schools (that can’t expel the bad apples) in the ghettos, complete intellectual cesspools where gangs of bullies would strangle any hope of education. (Sound familiar?) What to do with incorrigible kids? They absolutely MUST be removed from public high schools!!! And grade schools too. You can not have a learning environment that is undermined with fear of violence or extortion. Institutionalize them? Reform schools? Work farms/schools? Boot camps/schools? Cannon fodder? Kick them out and revise child labor laws to allow them to get a job,,, below minimum wages? They need authority. They need to learn discipline. (Or maybe just the opposite. Maybe they need to learn how to take care of themselves and be independent of other people.) Either way, they need to take responsibility for their actions. At the very least, they need to be rendered ineffective at disrupting schools and society. Good God, we have had this problem forever and it is still not solved. Who's tending the store? I think that bad kids should be kicked out of every "regular" public school and sent to separate "reform" schools. Institutes (or institutions) for the bad apples - IBA schools. Strong discipline. Strong supervision. Basic instruction – 3 R's (dumbed down?) and some trades and apprenticeship programs. Thank God for private (and charter?) schools. These can provide a violence free environment for education. (Can charter schools permanently expel bad kids? If not, why not?) A good education is the best way to escape a ghetto. Therefore, ghetto kids (hell, all kids) must have violence-free schools.

We need many more trade schools and apprenticeship programs - not everyone can go to college. For one thing, you have to be able to afford it. For another, you have to be smart enough to be able to handle it. Yes, you must have an IQ that is above average in order to get into collage. If a kid's IQ is under 110 (or pick a number) (or he can't pass a 9th grade entrance exam) it doesn't make sense to send him to a college prep high school; he should be sent to trade school prep! (Oh, I forgot, we don't have very many trade schools.) At the very least, the kid should have the choice of trade school prep or college prep. And smart kids should also have the opportunity to go to a trade school if they can't afford collage or if thats what they (their parents) want to do. The need for trade schools and apprenticeship programs is so obvious, why can't the State Board of Education see this??? Why can't our politicians see this??? Why can't the public in general see this???

Busing in California is bad. It brings about cultural clashes and alienation. It was necessary in blatantly discriminatory states, but not in California. It has some applicability for escaping violence prone ghetto schools, but generally, neighborhood schools are good. Common community, common culture, common social situation. Classes can be tailored to fit the community’s needs. Besides, mixing wide ranges of academic abilities is bad - you lose both the bottom and the top end students.

Keep the GI bill, but do not extend it to community / national service organizations. It should be for only those who are willing to put their lives' on the line for their country. One year of school for each year of active service. Four to a customer.

IQ tests are useful. So maybe they discriminate against alien cultures. So what, so do our schools. Isn't the objective to determine how well a kid can do in one of our schools?

Affirmative action in enrollment is racial discrimination in enrollment!

The entrance criteria for public universities should be based on only one thing - the proven academic achievement of the student, as measured by standard state wide (or country wide) academic achievement tests (AATs), not any politically correct social engineering criteria, such as the family income or lack thereof, the parents education or lack thereof, race, creed, color, sex, or any other social / economic / religious / political criteria, just proven academic achievement. The lower colleges could also consider IQ or Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores in cases of poor achievers. The Junior Collages should continue to admit anyone and everyone who wants to give it a go. Maybe IQ or SAT scores could be used to rank admissibility. But after admission, in all cases, all grades and advancement should be based on achievement and nothing else.

It is ridiculous for kids with low test scores to insist that they have the right to be admitted to a university. California has exactly the right solution for this kind of kid - Junior Collages. They will accept anyone. If you do well in a JC, then you can advance to a university. Thats what I did.

All teachers and teaching assistants must speak English fluently, with little accent. There is nothing worse than taking classes from someone who can't be understood. It doesn't make any difference that the teacher is smart or deserving or needy. If he can’t be understood, he can’t teach. Why use someone who can't teach? The effect could be devastating to some young person taking a course that is required for advancement, or to a student who's GPA is precarious. Cal, take note.

The Special Education fiasco.....

ENGLISH LANGUAGE:

Make it official. Make English the one and only language used in the US government!!!French might be OK as a second language, it is such a beautiful oral language, if only they would learn how to spell...Stop printing everything multilingual. Anyone that does not know English should not be allowed to vote! If you want to be a citizen, then you better learn the language. If you don't want to learn the language, go home, and take your kids with you, or at least don't vote and don't ask for government services or assistance. Make English fluency a citizenship requirement. And stop second language ballots, etc.Make English the only language used in school, except for foreign language classes.Teach foreigners English by the immersion method.

Foreign born parents who speak only their native language at home do disadvantage their kids. Isn't that easy to see? What is the debate about? Its a no brainer. That judge in Texas who fined parents for not teaching their kids English was 100% right. Forcing him to apologize was an insult to common sense. If they want to use two of more languages, that’s fine, just make sure that English is one of them. If they want to speak only their native tongue, then they should go back home, and take their kids with them.

ENGLISH MEASUREMENT SYSTEM:

A stifling, idiotic anachronism. For example, try calculating volume or even just area using feet, inches and fractions of an inch. And then try it in metric. It will probably take less than half of the time. It is absolutely mind boggling to think that we still use the English measurement system. It is OUTRAGEOUS !!!!!!!!!Get rid of it!Go metric!!! Have you no regard for you children, you sniveling, cowardly, politician you? You probably know that it is the right thing to do but you are afraid you might loose one vote from the old dog troglodytes who cant stand to learn anything new. I hope you don’t get reelected. Even the English themselves converted to metric!

ENVIRONMENT:

Ya gadda have environment. Even Republicans. And you have to have some left over for the kids. We need clean air. We need clean water. We need national parks. We need open space We need wilderness. We need old growth trees. We need national forests not national lumber. Acid rain is not nice. Nuclear waste pollution is even worse.

is a crock. Gay people are not normal. They have disgusting sexual habits. Its probably not entirely their fault. Its probably in their genes. They should be accepted as one of God’s children as are we. They should be tolerated. Up to a point. They have to understand that their lifestyle is disgusting to normal people and if they flaunt their abnormality, then they deserve our contempt. Gay Power is flaunting.

Don’t ask, don’t tell makes a lot of sense to me.

Gays adopting babies or orphans is completely asinine. What a cruel thing to do to a child. It should be a criminal offense.

In all fairness to the gays, some have contributed greatly to society and humanity. Some have made the world a better place to live.

INDIANS:

I mean Amerindians, ie American Indians, AI’s, not II’s (Indian Indians). Free the AI’s. Make them all American citizens. The same rights and privileges. The same laws. The same duties and obligations. The whole smear. Welfare and everything. Don’t hold back. On the other hand, do not allow them any rights or privileges that everyone else does not have. Like fishing and hunting. Like gambling. Gambling. Good God, we have set them up to be the new Mafia - IM’s. How could we do this to them? To ourselves? Dumb, dumb, dumb. If they want the protection and services of the federal government, they should obey all of the same federal laws that the rest of us do. If they want the protection and services of a state government, they should obey all the state laws just like the rest of us do. Abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Void all the treaties. One more time. We know how to do that. We have had lots of practice, and now is the time for all that practice to pay off. Or else declare war.

INTEGRATION / ASSIMILATION:

The heart of this issue is interracial marriage. I believe in integration but I have a hard time with assimilation. I will leave that to future generations.

LEGAL SYSTEM:

Judges making up laws is crazy. Court ordered busing. Court ordered racial discrimination (affirmative action). Etc. It should be unconstitutional for the judiciary to usurp the prerogatives of the legislature or the executive branch. It should be grounds for dismissal. (Gee, I thought that our constitution already took care of that.)

Pain and suffering is a part of life. People shouldn't get paid for it. Your insurance company wont pay you for it. Neither should our courts. Punitive damages should be levied on behalf of society, not the plaintiffs and especially not the lawyers. Punitive damages should, therefore, go into the general fund.

Juries don't always work. We no longer have a common morality. Some peoples' morals really stink. Some people are idiots. Some people are prejudiced or bigoted. Race haters. Cop haters. Men haters. Etc...

We have a democracy where the majority rules. Make 50% the requirement for conviction.

Eliminate insanity as a plea for 1st degree murder. Who cares if they are crazy or not? If they kill someone then let’s get rid of them, permanently.

Sometimes a criminal is released when a cop breaks the rules on how to gather evidence. Now then, the killer broke the law, and the cop broke the law, so who do they punish? The citizens! They turn the killer loose on the citizens!!!!!! Why don't they keep the killer in jail until they punish the cop, and then execute the killer??

LINE ITEM VETO:

Yes. If the president doesn't get the line item veto then I think we should consider going to a parliamentary form of government. Maybe we should anyway. We need the majority party and the executive’s party to be the same. Or else we end up with an impasse in the budget and other important legislation. Like it has been the past number of years. With just one party running the show, there is clear accountability. Inescapable responsibility. And greater progress. Its also another way to get a third or fourth party involved, which I think we need. The present parties now define the poles, ie the rabid radicals on one end and the hard headed conservatives on the other. There’s lots of room in-between. And who’s says there should be only be two poles. What’s wrong with three or four poles? I like poles. Did I tell you that I am Polish?

MANNERS:

Manners were never meant to be used as cudgels. It is bad manners for someone to berate someone else for using bad manners.Gentlemen are supposed to be gentle men, to facilitate social intercourse, not to squash it.

METRIC SYSTEM:

When the hell are we going to go metric? The English system is a ridiculous system to burden our children with. Yes, ignorant people are afraid of change. Always have been. Always will be. No, the nation will not do it all by themselves. No, we don't need another study. Yes, it is necessary for the legislature to enact something. Yes, the executive branch could help out. Pull your heads out and get it done. Just do it!

MORALITY IN GOVERNMENT:

Politicians tend towards expedience rather than morality or fairness. Does the end justifies the means? Ask Hitler about that one. Busing. Affirmative action. Estimated tax payments. Penalties on wrong estimates of future taxes. Taxing social security. Mandated business welfare. Any solution that is unfair or morally wrong is not a solution at all. It is just one more problem. Pragmatism as a philosophy is morally bankrupt.